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Sharpening grit question

About the finest grit I have availabe for sharpening knives, plane irons or whatever is a DMT red hone.
I'm not sure what the actual grit on the red hone is.
I need to "move on down" to finer, either diamond stones or whatever type abrasives, but I don't know what the "next step down" is, how do I transit from the red DMT to ??????????

Re: Sharpening grit question

I believe red is around 600 grit. I would go up to 1000 grit next either in a water stone or sandpaper. You can get a green diamond stone that is 1200 grit. Once you get to 1000 or 1200 the next step is to begin polishing say at 4000 grit or better. Just my .02 worth. YMMV

Re: Sharpening grit question

LeeValley has some equivalent grit information for the DMT diamond stones on their website. They also sell the 3M sandpaper in very fine grits for honing/polishing. 1000 / 15 micron2500 / 5 micron9000 / .5 micron

Re: Sharpening grit question

Originally Posted by Travis Porter

I believe red is around 600 grit. I would go up to 1000 grit next either in a water stone or sandpaper. You can get a green diamond stone that is 1200 grit. Once you get to 1000 or 1200 the next step is to begin polishing say at 4000 grit or better. Just my .02 worth. YMMV